House Bill Funds CHIPS Act, Stresses R&D

Re:House Bill Funds CHIPS Act, Stresses R&D by Kadin on Monday May 30, 2022 @04:18PM (#31563238)

Seems a bit strange that Phoenix would be a desirable place to build a fab, given how water-intensive most processes are. Yes, the water can and should be recycled... but it just seems weird to build a plant like that in one of the parts of the country that will probably never have enough fresh water, compared to other areas where they can't get it out of the way fast enough.

Is it the labor pool there that makes it attractive? Energy costs? Something about state/local subsidies?

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Re:House Bill Funds CHIPS Act, Stresses R&D by windowsrookie on Monday May 30, 2022 @04:53PM (#31563521)

The reason I heard is that Phoenix is seismically stabile, and weather stabile. Both of those things can cause power outages which are incredibly expensive at a fab.

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Re:House Bill Funds CHIPS Act, Stresses R&D by newsclues on Monday May 30, 2022 @09:10PM (#31565210)

And nuclear power https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generatin...

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Re:House Bill Funds CHIPS Act, Stresses R&D by mook on Monday May 30, 2022 @09:00PM (#31565156)

Compared to Taiwan, land of earthquakes and typhoons. It's… amazing that things even work in Hsinchu?

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Re:House Bill Funds CHIPS Act, Stresses R&D by whatshisface on Monday May 30, 2022 @07:05PM (#31564576)

Can power outages be more expensive than diesel?

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Re:House Bill Funds CHIPS Act, Stresses R&D by Vecr on Monday May 30, 2022 @07:20PM (#31564654)

Quakes and flooding can kill generators. You can be smart and build them on elevated earthworks, but if the event is severe enough something will fail.

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Re:House Bill Funds CHIPS Act, Stresses R&D by 55873445216111 on Monday May 30, 2022 @07:29PM (#31564708)

Fabs require 10's of MW continuous load. Not feasible to backup with diesel generator.

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Re:House Bill Funds CHIPS Act, Stresses R&D by justinjlynn on Monday May 30, 2022 @10:10PM (#31565482)

Rather feasible with a set of natural gas turbine plants. Pipelines and local storage would be expensive but doable - depending on the economic damage of the plant going offline. Cost share it with a data centre facility to reduce the per megawatt cost even further.

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Re:House Bill Funds CHIPS Act, Stresses R&D by 55873445216111 on Tuesday May 31, 2022 @01:26AM (#31566371)

Yes. But in layman's terms, wouldn't you just call that a "power plant"?

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Re:House Bill Funds CHIPS Act, Stresses R&D by justinjlynn on Friday June 03, 2022 @04:41AM (#31605775)

I mean, so too is a genset a powerplant. It's really just a question of scale and generation capacity. Imagine we're talking about a cell versus a battery. Same thing really.

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Re:House Bill Funds CHIPS Act, Stresses R&D by 8note on Monday May 30, 2022 @05:54PM (#31564039)

The water involved is mostly recoverable and reusable

While there's cost involved, its shortage probably won't be a bottleneck?

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Re:House Bill Funds CHIPS Act, Stresses R&D by rocqua on Monday May 30, 2022 @06:45PM (#31564442)

I recall a video by asianometry stating that best case water re-use is about 70%. That will be rough in the desert.

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Re:House Bill Funds CHIPS Act, Stresses R&D by ezsmi on Monday May 30, 2022 @08:13PM (#31564942)

Agriculture and municipal uses much more water than industry in AZ. Shockingly even with the population growth total state water use hasn’t increased due to conservation efforts. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environme...

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Re:House Bill Funds CHIPS Act, Stresses R&D by ac29 on Monday May 30, 2022 @08:09PM (#31564912)

Intel is funding a bunch of water projects in Arizona with the goal to be net postive in water use: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/environment/water-re...

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